Caught In a Fading Light
by nicalyse
Summary: His best friend's going to the army, and now he's asking Puck to make sure his ex-fiance is okay, whatever that means. As if Rachel can be okay right now. As if Puck would even know what that looks like. One-shot.


"Look, can you..." Finn trails off, frustrated, pushing a hand through his hair. Hair that's going to be cut short in just a few days. He turns to meet Puck's eyes. "Can you make sure she's okay?"

Puck resists the urge to look away. "Are you sure you want to ask _me_ to do that?" he asks, going for some levity.

Not that that's going to work. His best friend's going to the fucking army, and now he's asking Puck to make sure his ex-fiance is _okay_, whatever the fuck that means. As if Rachel can be okay right now. As if Puck would even know what that looks like.

Finn shakes his head, the attempt at humor missing the mark. "I just don't want her to spend her last summer here moping around and stuff. If anyone'll be able to force her to have fun, it's you."

"Santana could do it," Puck offers weakly.

"Puck. Please, man."

"Yeah." Puck takes a deep breath. "Yeah. Okay."

The worst part is that he's pretty sure that he knows exactly what he's getting himself into.

* * *

Rachel and her dads get back from their trip to New York on Friday. Finn has been gone for a week.

Puck waits until Monday to go by her house.

She answers the door wearing a pair of tiny white shorts and a red tee shirt, her hair in a falling-down ponytail and her face bare of makeup save for a bit of mascara. He's immediately, irrationally annoyed by the slump of her shoulders.

"How was your trip?" he asks without preamble, hovering just inside the front door.

She blinks at him, her fingertips still resting on the door handle. "Good." She brushes past him, walking toward the kitchen. He follows, the cool quiet of her house washing over him. "My dads took me to see _Once_ on Broadway."

Puck watches her walk straight to the cookie jar - because of course the Berrys have a legit cookie jar sitting on their counter - and lift the lid. "We watched that movie, right? The Irish guy and the chick. Where they're in the piano store."

"That's the one." She holds out a cookie, rolling her eyes when he looks at it dubiously. "It's oatmeal chocolate chip. And not vegan," she adds, heading off his question.

He takes the cookie, biting into it and watching her brush crumbs off the counter. "I'm fine," she says after a long moment. She doesn't look up. "You don't have to check up on me."

He scoffs. "I'm not checking up on you. I was bored, and everybody else is busy." It's a bald-faced lie, and they both know it.

"Fine." She reaches up to push her bangs out of her eyes, and Puck sees that she's not wearing her engagement ring. Which, since she isn't engaged any more, makes sense. But still. "Do you want to watch a movie?"

He shoves the last of the the cookie into his mouth. "Only if I can have another cookie," he mumbles, nearly spraying crumbs.

Rachel wrinkles her nose, but retrieves another cookie from the jar.

* * *

"I'm mad at him."

Puck looks over at her, squinting a little behind his sunglasses. "I'd be really fucking pissed off if I was you."

When he got to her house this afternoon, Rachel said that she was bored and asked him to take her somewhere she'd never been before. He brought her to the park where he and Finn used to play basketball when they were kids. It's halfway between Puck's house and the one where Finn used to live. They came here every day the summer after seventh grade, met up with a group of guys Puck hasn't even talked to in three years.

Rachel laughs, but it sounds a little strangled. "He broke off our engagement because he loves me. Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard?"

He considers the question for a moment, leaning back on his hands on top of the picnic table they're sitting on. "No. I mean, it's pretty stupid, but that's not even the stupidest thing I've ever heard _Finn_ say, so."

She shakes her head, smoothing the skirt of her floral sundress over her thighs. The way he's sitting, her hair falling over her shoulder obstructs his view of her face.

"You don't need permission to be mad at him," he offers. Her ribs expand when she sucks in a deep breath. "Springing it on you the way he did was pretty shitty."

She turns to face him, pushing her hair back over her shoulder. "I had to buy pajamas when I got to New York because everything I had packed was for my honeymoon. Not for sharing a room with my dads."

"Shit," he breathes, completely at a loss but feeling like he has to say something.

She nods once, smartly. "Yeah." She slips down from the table, brushing off the back of her dress as she turns to look at him. "Will you take me home now? Please?"

They leave the park, but he takes her to the Lima Bean instead of home, buys her one of those overpriced frozen blended soy things and makes up stories about the sex lives of the other people waiting in line with them, murmuring low into her ear until she elbows him in the ribs to cut him off, her voice breathless with laughter as she tells him to stop.

It's nice to hear her laugh like that, the sort of laugh that's inhibited only by her own sense of propriety.

* * *

Puck's phone jolts him awake when it rings, the combination of the sound and the vibration and the light jerking him out of that space where you're mostly asleep but not quite and leaving him completely disoriented. He hits the button and mumbles something - _hello_ or _what?_ or _fuck off_; he isn't sure - half of his face still buried in his pillow.

"Can you come pick me up?"

Rachel's voice, soft and slightly slurred, drags him a little closer to consciousness. "Where are you?" he asks, pushing himself upright.

"Blaine's. It's the three of us," Puck assumes the third is Kurt, "and we were just hanging out and then we were drinking, and now I'm drunk and I just want to go to sleep in my own bed instead of being the third wheel, and I can't call my dads to get me because they're gone for the weekend."

She says it all in a rush, barely taking a breath as her voice takes on a frantic sort of edge that makes Puck's head hurt. "Yeah." He scrubs a hand over his face, pushing back the blankets. "Yeah. I'll be there in like, fifteen minutes, okay?"

She's sitting on the front steps when Puck pulls up to the curb in front of Blaine's house, the porch light throwing her long, distorted shadow down the sidewalk when she stands to walk to the truck.

"Are you okay?" he asks when she climbs into the cab, dropping her purse in the floorboard and jerking the heavy door closed with a slam.

"No, I'm not okay," she answers. She bats ineffectually at his hand when he reaches over to touch her shoulder, turning her upper half to face him. "I'm fine," she snaps irritably, shrugging him off. Puck holds up his hand in a gesture of surrender. "I'm not okay, but I'm fine," she says, softer. When he still doesn't move, she sighs. "Will you please take me home, Noah?"

"Are you gonna puke in my floorboard?" he asks. She glowers at him, which isn't really an answer, but he accepts it for the no that she intends it to be and puts the truck in gear.

Puck pulls into the driveway and cuts the engine when he gets to her house. Unless she flat-out refuses, he's going inside with her to make sure that she's okay. She's drunk and upset; he can't just send her on her merry way.

She doesn't have any problem unlocking the front door. Once they're inside, she just drops her keys and her purse on the table there, a careless sort of gesture that Rachel Berry wouldn't make under normal circumstances. He says nothing, trailing her into the kitchen and watching her pour herself a glass of water from a filter pitcher before speaking up.

"You want to tell me what's going on?"

Her eyes widen the slightest bit, and she sets her glass carefully on the counter that she's leaning against a bit too heavily for it to be just casual. "I'm drunk," she answers simply.

"Rachel."

"I'm drunk, and I don't have a boyfriend to call to drive me home."

"Rachel," he repeats, softer this time.

"He knew," she spits, suddenly venomous, shoving her glass away so hard that water sloshes over the rim. "Kurt knew what he was planning when I saw him that morning, and he didn't say anything. He just let me walk into all of that." Her cheeks are red, flushed with alcohol and temper. "You all did." Her eyes are glittering with unshed tears. "You all just-"

"Don't put this on me," Puck interrupts, watching the tears overflow and slip down her cheeks. "He asked us all to come say goodbye. We didn't know until we got there that he wasn't going with you."

"Who told you?" She swallows hard. "When you got there, who told you?"

He doesn't want to lie to her, but he kind of hates the truth. "Kurt."

She swipes at the tears on her cheeks. "Would you have told me? If you knew beforehand, would you have told me what I was walking into?"

He kind of hates her for asking him that. Whatever he thinks about the way that Finn went about things, Finn is his best friend. Whatever Rachel is to him, Finn is still his _best friend_. "I don't know," he finally says, deciding that being honest is the way to go.

She scrubs at her cheeks hard, rubbing away the tears. "I'm tired," she says definitively, picking up her glass and setting it in the sink. There's still a puddle of water on the counter. "Thank you for the ride."

He would laugh at the sudden formality of her voice if the situation wasn't so very unfunny.

"You're welcome," he says instead, turning heel and walking out of the kitchen, out of the house, leaving her there in front of the sink.

* * *

"I know it wasn't your fault," she says when she shows up at his house a few days later. "But it's hard to be mad at him when he isn't here."

"I get it," he answers, then offers her a Skittle from the bag in his hand.

* * *

June melts quietly into July with humid-hazy mornings and dazzlingly bright afternoon sunlight. Puck watches Rachel pretend that she isn't still all fucked up, wearing the bright mask of the unfailing optimist that he remembers her being back when he and everyone else at school was tormenting her. Except now he knows her, and he's paying attention, so he can see when the mask falters, when her eyes go sad and she gets quiet, folding in on herself. But short of bringing Finn back to Lima - which is impossible - Puck doesn't know what to do about it.

So he just spends time with her.

Rachel is laying out next to the pool when he stops by her house one day. There are headphones in her ears and sunglasses over her eyes, and she's wearing a bikini patterned with candy-colored stripes. She's gorgeous, lean muscle and smooth skin all on display, and Puck takes a second, just a second, to look at her.

Then he dips his fingers into the cool water, flicking drops against her skin to announce his presence.

Her whole body jerks, and she leans up onto her elbows, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head so he can see her eyes when she glares at him. "You're a jerk," she announces, tugging her headphones out of her ears. The music filters up to him, just a few slow, sweet notes from a guitar that he can't place before she stops it.

He shrugs. "You looked hot." He doesn't elaborate. She'll take it as she will.

"I thought you had to work today."

"I'm finished. What are you doing?"

"Baking a cake," she deadpans, slipping her sunglasses back down over her eyes and leaning back.

Before he can think about it, Puck has grabbed her around the waist, hauling her up out of her chair, flailing and protesting as he tosses her into the pool.

She comes up spluttering, pushing her wet hair off of her forehead and glaring at him furiously. "What was that for?"

Instead of answering, Puck peels off his shirt and jumps in beside her, doing his best to make as big a splash as possible. She's shaking her head when he surfaces, a smile tugging at her lips even as she tries to look stern. "Loosen up, Rachel," he advises, ducking back under the water, grabbing her ankle to pull her down with him as he goes.

Sometimes he does things just to see what she'll do.

* * *

"I got a letter from Finn," she says out of nowhere one day.

They're in her car, driving back to her house from a trip to the Lima Bean. Rachel's eyes, hidden behind sunglasses, seem to be focused carefully on the street in front of her. Puck follows her example, swallowing thickly. "What did he say?"

"Some stuff about basic training," she answers lightly. "He said I shouldn't be mad at Kurt."

"Are you still mad at Kurt?"

"Yes." Puck hazards a glance in her direction, watches her hands skim restlessly over the steering wheel. "He said he wants me to move on. He wants me to go to New York and make the most of it." Her voice catches a little on the words, words that Puck knows belong to Finn and not her. "God, he just makes me so angry."

"You know it's okay to be mad at him, right?" Rachel's head turns sharply. "Like, thinking he's a jackass doesn't mean that you love him any less."

Rachel doesn't say anything for the rest of the drive to her house, her shoulders tense and her lips pressed together in a thin line. In the driveway, she cuts the engine and turns sideways in her seat to face him. "Finn is a jackass," she says flatly, "because he made a decision about what was best for me and acted on it without giving me a chance to say anything."

The sun beating through the windshield is oppressively hot. "It wasn't just about you," Puck says carefully, quietly. "The army thing...it's something he feels like he has to do for his dad."

"I know that. And I understand it, I do, but..." She takes a deep breath. "But I'm still mad, even though I'm so, so tired of being mad."

Puck doesn't know what to say to that, so he says nothing.

* * *

He's drunk when he realizes that he's falling in love with her.

That's how he knows that it's real, fucked up as it is.

With Santana leaving for New York, Brittany throws a rager of a going away party. It's just a big ploy to distract herself, Puck knows, and there'll be fallout later, but for now he just goes along and enjoys it with everyone else. He escapes from a game of Quarters with Sugar, Artie, and Mercedes when he starts to cross from drunk to wasted, stepping out into the back yard to get some fresh, albeit sticky humid, air. He finds Rachel there, sitting at the bottom of the back porch steps.

"I'm drunk," he says by way of greeting, sitting heavily beside her.

"Me too." She smiles brightly when he looks at her, messy hair spilling over her shoulders, cheeks flushed.

"Looks good on you," he says, nudging her with his shoulder.

"Do you think Santana will be my friend in New York?" she asks, so quiet that he almost doesn't hear her over the sounds coming from inside the house.

"I don't know," he answers honestly. He stopped trying to predict anything about Santana a while ago.

"I always knew I'd go there on my own." It's practically a whisper, and something tightens in Puck's chest. He tells himself it isn't his heart.

Because this is Rachel and his heart isn't involved - can't be involved - in this thing they have going on. They're friends, just friends, and he's only spending time with her because _Finn_ asked him to make sure she's okay. It's just dumb luck that he actually likes being around her, that she makes him laugh and listens when he talks. She's a good friend, which he probably should have expected, but that's it.

Just his friend with the dark, shiny hair and the pretty eyes and the laugh that makes him smile every time he hears it.

Fuck.

"Hey," he says, voice a little rougher than he likes, waiting until she looks up at him to say, "just because you're on your own doesn't mean that you're alone." She blinks. "There are a lot of people rooting for you."

She smiles a little and leans forward to brush a kiss over his cheek before wrapping her arms around him in a hug. "Thank you, Noah," she murmurs, her breath warm against the side of his neck.

He is truly and utterly fucked.

* * *

"I know Finn asked you to look out for me."

Puck turns his head so fast looking at her that his neck pops.

"I got another letter," she says by way of explanation.

He slumps back against the couch. "Are you mad?"

"I think," she says slowly, glancing down at her hands before meeting his eyes again, "that you would have looked out for me even if Finn hadn't asked."

He's thought about it before and come to the same conclusion, so he nods.

She shrugs one shoulder delicately, like he's just answered his own question, and other than the tightness behind his ribs, Puck feels himself relax.

* * *

Boxes appear in Rachel's bedroom at the end of July, a glaring reminder that she's moving in three weeks, leaving Lima behind, probably forever.

Leaving Puck behind. Probably forever.

Which is a fucking stupid thought that he pushes out of his mind the second that he thinks it.

Except it doesn't really work like that.

* * *

While the party that Blaine throws is ostensibly a going away celebration for Rachel, it's clear to Puck when he arrives that the vast majority of people here are just taking advantage of the opportunity to get drunk and make a mess in someone else's house.

He finds Rachel in the kitchen, perched on the edge of the counter with Brittany and laughing riotously. "Noah!" she exclaims when she sees him, eyes lighting up.

"How drunk are you?" he asks by way of greeting, letting her wrap an arm around his neck and pull him in for a half-hug.

"Not so drunk that I'm not going to drink more," she answers before taking a pointed sip from her pink straw. "Catch up."

A screwdriver and a handful of shots later, he has.

But as his level of intoxication has risen, so has the odd, anticipatory feeling that's been niggling for the last couple of weeks. Like when you can see storm clouds gathering in the sky, but you aren't sure if it's going to be a gentle soaking rain or a hail storm. He feels it in his stomach, a nervous sort of twitchiness that he can't shake. He gets a jolt of it every time he hears Rachel laugh, and the alcohol hasn't done anything to dull the sensation.

The Andersons have a gazebo in their back yard, a pretty little thing that's full of flowers and strung with twinkle lights. It's the least likely place for Puck to go to get away from Rachel, which is exactly why he chooses it.

He should have know that it would be the first place she would look for him.

"You disappeared," she says quietly. He watches her move around the gazebo, her flat sandals quiet against the wood as she looks at the flowers, her black dress shifting gently in the breeze. She turns to face him after a long moment. "You're quiet."

He shrugs.

She sits beside him, her arm pressed against his from shoulder to elbow, knee brushing the outside of his thigh. "You're going to miss me when I'm gone." She says it lightly, leaning her weight into him.

A whole litany of sarcastic responses run through his head, but he just says, "Yeah," in as flat a tone as he's able.

"I'm going to miss you, too. I don't know what I would have done without you this summer."

He turns to her, intending to say something like _You're Rachel Berry, you would've been fine_, but the words die in his throat. Instead, he leans forward (and he doesn't know why, he'll never know why) and brushes his lips against hers once, gently. It's soft, so soft, and not enough.

"Noah," she breathes, lowering her head when he tries to kiss her in earnest. Her eyes are wide when he looks at her, the tips of her fingers pressed to her lips. "I'm sorry," she whispers.

It doesn't make sense. Rachel doesn't have anything to be sorry for, and that she would apologize to him for something that _he_ did makes him feel like shit.

"Rachel, I-"

"Don't," she interrupts, blinking rapidly.

"Rach-"

"I'm sorry," she says again, standing and literally running out of the gazebo and into the house.

* * *

Puck starts Sunday morning with a pounding headache, a mouth that feels stuffed with cotton, and Rachel standing on his front porch.

"We need to talk about last night," she says, hand coming up to toy with the end of the braid over her shoulder.

"We were drunk. I fucked up." He says it dismissively, shrugging a shoulder, and turns to walk into the kitchen, leaving Rachel there to decide if she wants to come into the house or walk away.

"You kissed me," she says when his view of her is obstructed by the open refrigerator door. He lets it swing shut with a clatter that reverberates painfully in his head and Rachel's, if the way she flinches means what he thinks. "Why did you kiss me?"

"Because I was drunk," he answers slowly, deliberately. As if to point out that it's a stupid question. Deflecting. He twists the cap off a bottle of Gatorade and takes a deep drink, swallowing hard past the lump in his throat. "It's not a big deal."

"Noah."

He's fucked beyond belief, because even now, when he's hungover and guilty and feels like complete shit, there's a part of him that's glad she's here, that she cares, that she knows that it was more than just him being drunk and stupid. She's beautiful, even with bloodshot eyes and messy hair that he can tell hasn't been washed, and he _wants_ her, all of her.

"It's not a big deal," he repeats, trying to make the lie convincing enough that he can believe it too. "Forget it ever happened."

He won't, but she should.

* * *

**Note:** Just a quick reminder that all of my fic - including things not posted here - can be found first at my Live Journal: .com.


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